This October 30 cut-off date doesn't mean that OEMs or retailers are no longer selling PCs with Windows 7 preloaded. I can verify after a trip earlier this week to the Datavision computer store in New York (as part of my ongoing hunt for a new Windows PC) that there are plenty of Windows 7 PCs still for sale. OEMs can continue to sell PCs preloaded with Windows 7 until October 30, 2014.

Note that when the retail software product reaches its end of sales date, it can still be purchased through OEMs (the company that made your PC) until it reaches the end of sales date for PCs with Windows preinstalled.

Mainstream (free, Microsoft-provided) support for Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 installed isn't ending until January 13, 2015. Microsoft will continue to provide security fixes for Windows 7 for free until the end of extended support, which is January 14, 2020 -- unless Microsoft ends up extending that support date, as it did with Windows XP.

Microsoft's official response to this request (via a company spokesperson) is no.

The long version of that statement:

Microsoft works in partnership with industry and government in China to help create an environment that encourages entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation through the protection of intellectual property, as well as assisting in software legalization efforts in line with the nation’s policy priorities. We have seen great improvement in the adoption of genuine operating systems, productivity software and apps, as well as movement to cloud services, as a result of these efforts and we look forward to continued progress. Microsoft is committed to working with end-users, businesses and governments in China to migrate their systems to a modern OS that better protects against security threats and is designed for modern work and life usage scenarios.

Every Windows product has a lifecycle, which begins when it is released and ends when it is no longer supported. For Windows XP, this lasted more than a decade. Customers will still be able to use Windows XP, but as a reminder, after April 8, 2014, Windows XP users will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft. We are very glad to see a great number of customers in China and all over the world obtaining tangible benefits of modernizing their IT investments from dramatically enhanced security, broad device choice to meet the needs of a mobile workforce, higher user productivity, and lower total cost of ownership by future-proofing their IT investments through deploying Windows 8.

About the author

Mary Jo Foley has been a tech journalist for almost 30 years. She is editor of ZDNet's "All About Microsoft" blog. She authored "Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era" and co-hosts the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT Network.
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